BRICS countries to specify shares in development bank they are creating

LONDON, December 03. /ITAR-TASS/. There are so far several outstanding items in the processes of the creation of a new international development bank by the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), Russian Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin said in the UK capital on Tuesday at the 20th Russian Banking Forum, organised by the London-based Adam Smith Institute. The Adam Smith Institute is one of the world's leading think tanks. Independent, non-profit, and non-partisan, it works to promote libertarian and free market ideas through research, publishing, media commentary, and educational programs.

Pankin said that the discussion of the creation of a number of new development banks, first of all, the BRICS bank, was going on with Russia’s participation. “It has been announced that its capital size will amount to $100 billion,” he said. “It is the stated capital, and the signed capital is $50 million, that is, $10 million from each country.”

“But the real funds to be contributed are not clear,” the deputy minister said. According to him, China insists on the contribution of the funds as soon as possible in the maximum amount. “And the other countries have different approaches, as not all of them are ready to allocate such resources,” Pankin noted.

The outcome of the discussion on the location of the bank’s headquarters is also unclear so far, he added. In addition, “there is no clarity yet regarding the bank’s line of activity.” According to Pankin, unlike the same post-Soviet space where the regional mandate and key profile of such an institution are clear, the announced BRICS bank is more like “an ideological structure.”

“The questions of its specifics and projects that it will support are yet to be considered,” Pankin stressed.